Chinese AI startup Moonshot files for $3 billion Hong Kong IPO at $50 billion valuation

Chinese AI startup Moonshot has confidentially filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong and is seeking to raise about $3 billion, Reuters reported Thursday.

The Beijing-based company, best known for its Kimi large language model, has been valued at $50 billion in an ongoing funding round, two sources told Reuters. A listing at that scale would put Moonshot among the biggest Chinese AI companies to reach public markets and add another major name to Hong Kong’s resurgent technology IPO pipeline.

The timing and size of the offering could still change. Regulatory approvals remain pending, and the amount raised will depend partly on market conditions, according to the report.

“Beijing-based startup Moonshot has confidentially filed for a Hong Kong initial public offering,” Reuters reported, citing three people ‌with knowledge of the plans.

The IPO push comes just months after Moonshot raised more than $2 billion from investors including Meituan, China Mobile and private equity firm CPE, according to a fundraising document reviewed by Reuters. That round brought the startup’s total funding to more than $5.5 billion.

Alibaba, Tencent, IDG Capital and HSG, formerly Sequoia Capital China, are among Moonshot’s other backers.

From Kimi K3 to a $50 billion AI company

Moonshot was founded in 2023 by Yang Zhilin, an AI researcher who pursued doctoral studies at Carnegie Mellon University. In roughly three years, the company has gone from a new entrant in China’s crowded generative AI market to one of its most valuable private technology companies.

Much of that rise has been tied to Kimi.

Moonshot released Kimi K3 in July, describing the model’s 2.8 trillion parameters as making it the world’s largest open-weight model. The release has received positive reviews and strong demand, but the company says that demand has put pressure on Moonshot’s available computing capacity.

That computing constraint may lead to an unusual partnership.

Moonshot is in talks with Microsoft, Amazon and Google over possible revenue-sharing agreements that would let the U.S. cloud giants host Kimi K3, sources previously told Reuters. A completed agreement could become the first major revenue-sharing deal between a Chinese AI developer and a leading U.S. cloud provider.

Such a partnership would stand out at a time when technology relations between Washington and Beijing remain tense, particularly around advanced semiconductors and AI.

Moonshot itself has faced scrutiny in Washington. Senior U.S. officials have raised allegations that the company used restricted Nvidia chips and distilled capabilities from Anthropic’s models. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the U.S. could add Moonshot to a trade blacklist.

Moonshot has disputed claims that Kimi K3 achieved its performance through distillation.

The company reportedly faced another hurdle before filing in Hong Kong. Moonshot unwound its offshore incorporation arrangement, commonly known as a red-chip structure, and shifted to an onshore Chinese domicile as part of the regulatory approval process, according to two Reuters sources.

China’s AI race is moving to the stock market

Moonshot’s proposed IPO arrives as Chinese AI companies increasingly turn to public markets for capital.

Z.AI, formerly known as Zhipu, and MiniMax have already listed in Hong Kong this year. Moonshot’s reported $50 billion private valuation places it below some major domestic rivals. DeepSeek has been valued at roughly $74 billion based on figures cited by Reuters sources, and Z.AI has reached a market capitalization of about $66 billion.

The broader Hong Kong IPO market has come roaring back. Companies had raised $41.2 billion through Hong Kong listings as of mid-August, up 142% from a year earlier, according to LSEG data cited by Reuters. Chinese technology companies accounted for most of that activity.

Moonshot is working with Goldman Sachs, CICC and Deutsche Bank on the proposed offering. CICC did not immediately respond to Reuters, and Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank declined to comment. Chinese technology publication LatePost first reported the confidential filing.

The bigger story may be how quickly AI economics are forcing young companies to seek enormous pools of capital. Training and serving frontier models requires vast computing resources, and Moonshot’s own admission that demand for Kimi K3 is straining capacity makes that pressure unusually visible.

A $3 billion Hong Kong IPO would give Moonshot far more capital to compete with DeepSeek and other Chinese AI rivals. It would give investors something equally significant: another public-market test of how much value they are willing to place on China’s emerging generation of AI model companies.

Moonshot AI Founder